Mar 27, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition has re-launched

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

This Beholder looks a bit underwhelmed.

Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights was a fascinating anomaly of a game, years ahead of its time. An online-oriented community sandbox disguised as a traditional Dungeons & Dragons adventure. While quite plain looking, taken at face value, it hid great depths and multitudes of opportunities for those willing to dig just below the surface.

Today, courtesy of Baldur’s Gate‘s new stewards, Beamdog, it returns. Polished up a little for modern PCs and their audience, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is out now.

(more…)

Mar 23, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition v8166 is now ready to download

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Merro

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition v8166 is now available on Steam and Beamdog. We’re closing in on the March 27 release date fast!

This build brings Steam and Beamdog versions back in line and focuses on camera, audio, and part-based item/character issues.

Hotfix - Mar 26

Fixed an issue where Borderless full-screen mode (introduced in 8166) prevented some resolution changes from happening.
Reverted an attachment point fix causing attachment issues on cloaks and horses in 8166.

Known Issues

We are still looking into the Intel Integrated GPU-related crashes on Windows.
Windows players using the server tool may experience save game corruption if they load the game from a save game rather than a module and then attempt to save the game via the server tool while nobody is logged into the server. In cases like this, please save your game while at least one player is still online.

Fixes

Fixed clipping/popping on some music tracks.
Fixed distortion/crackling on music.
Switched to using OpenALSoft to allow surround sound to work properly.
Fixed an issue with positional audio listener orientation that was causing undefined behavior.
Removed UI options that are no longer relevant with OpenAL.
Fixed case sensitivity issues with opening music files.
Fixed an array bounds issue in the MP3 decoder.
Paste (as in copy/paste) has been fixed.
Fixed the issue where part-based rendering would not attach properly; like crossbows, slings, tails and wings.
Fixed the camera issue where switching to Drive Mode would lock the zoom-axis erroneously.
Fixed the camera issue where it would start tilted down in some cases.
We fixed ANSI-encoding of text (sorry, not UTF-8 yet) in all input modes.
Everything the NWN chat font supports should now work.
The console doesn’t emit \ (or `, depending) anymore when opening it.
The console cannot be closed anymore with the console-open key. The reason for this is that some console commands require \; i.e. workshopupload. Use ESC instead.
You can now type ~ and ` in the console.
We fixed an issue where UI click positions would sometimes not line up with the buttons after switching window mode or resizing the game window.

Features

Lighting and normal-mapping on static objects has been improved.
Added a pointer on CGameObject dedicated to NWNX use.
Numpad Return now acts the same as Enter on the main key block.
Re-enabled 2x UI scaling on 1080p. Some main menu elements do not fit yet. We plan to update the screens that break so they play nice at 1080p.

nwn.ini

Under Display Options, you can now set glFinishBeforeFBO=1. This will cost about 20% performance, but will fix post-process rendering issues on some setups, particularly Intel. When turned on, you’ll notice filter “leaking” into the next, producing visual artifacts (You can test this on the console by typing glFinishBeforeFBO=1). The alternative is to only run one post-process filter.
You can turn on Borderless Window mode by setting Borderless=1 under Display Options.
You can use DESKTOP-style fullscreen mode (“borderless fullscreen”) by setting FullScreenDesktopMode=1 under Display Options. FullScreen needs to be enabled as well for this to work.

Mar 23, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition v8166 is now ready to download

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Merro

Hotfix - Mar 26

Fixed an issue where Borderless full-screen mode (introduced in 8166) prevented some resolution changes from happening.
Reverted an attachment point fix causing attachment issues on cloaks and horses in 8166.

Known Issues

We are still looking into the Intel Integrated GPU-related crashes on Windows.
Windows players using the server tool may experience save game corruption if they load the game from a save game rather than a module and then attempt to save the game via the server tool while nobody is logged into the server. In cases like this, please save your game while at least one player is still online.

Fixes

Fixed clipping/popping on some music tracks.
Fixed distortion/crackling on music.
Switched to using OpenALSoft to allow surround sound to work properly.
Fixed an issue with positional audio listener orientation that was causing undefined behavior.
Removed UI options that are no longer relevant with OpenAL.
Fixed case sensitivity issues with opening music files.
Fixed an array bounds issue in the MP3 decoder.
Paste (as in copy/paste) has been fixed.
Fixed the issue where part-based rendering would not attach properly; like crossbows, slings, tails and wings.
Fixed the camera issue where switching to Drive Mode would lock the zoom-axis erroneously.
Fixed the camera issue where it would start tilted down in some cases.
We fixed ANSI-encoding of text (sorry, not UTF-8 yet) in all input modes.
Everything the NWN chat font supports should now work.
The console doesn’t emit \ (or `, depending) anymore when opening it.
The console cannot be closed anymore with the console-open key. The reason for this is that some console commands require \; i.e. workshopupload. Use ESC instead.
You can now type ~ and ` in the console.
We fixed an issue where UI click positions would sometimes not line up with the buttons after switching window mode or resizing the game window.

Features

Lighting and normal-mapping on static objects has been improved.
Added a pointer on CGameObject dedicated to NWNX use.
Numpad Return now acts the same as Enter on the main key block.
Re-enabled 2x UI scaling on 1080p. Some main menu elements do not fit yet. We plan to update the screens that break so they play nice at 1080p.

nwn.ini

Under Display Options, you can now set glFinishBeforeFBO=1. This will cost about 20% performance, but will fix post-process rendering issues on some setups, particularly Intel. When turned on, you’ll notice filter “leaking” into the next, producing visual artifacts (You can test this on the console by typing glFinishBeforeFBO=1). The alternative is to only run one post-process filter.
You can turn on Borderless Window mode by setting Borderless=1 under Display Options.
You can use DESKTOP-style fullscreen mode (“borderless fullscreen”) by setting FullScreenDesktopMode=1 under Display Options. FullScreen needs to be enabled as well for this to work.

Mar 22, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Patch 8165

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Merro

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Patch 8165 is now available on Steam-only. This patch contains Linux-only fixes required for pre-release testing. 8165 will temporarily disable cross play between Steam and Beamdog players.

We plan to follow up with another patch in the very near future that will address issues introduced in 8164 and brings Steam and Beamdog versions back in line.

Fixes:

Added missing libraries required for Ubuntu users to play

Known issues:

At 2x UI Scaling on a 1080p monitor, some buttons in multiplayer matching are cut off at the bottom of the screen. To work around this, disable 2x UI Scaling while choosing your multiplayer options, then re-enable 2x UI Scaling.

Mar 22, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Patch 8165

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Merro

Fixes:

Added missing libraries required for Ubuntu users to play

Known issues:

At 2x UI Scaling on a 1080p monitor, some buttons in multiplayer matching are cut off at the bottom of the screen. To work around this, disable 2x UI Scaling while choosing your multiplayer options, then re-enable 2x UI Scaling.

Mar 16, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Patch 8164 Now Available

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Merro

Busy times at Beamdog! With the March 27 Steam release less than two weeks away, the team is locking down features and fixes. Build 8164 is now available on Steam and Beamdog.com.

Known Issues

We are still looking into the Intel Integrated GPU-related performance regressions, especially on Mac.
We are also looking into the Intel Integrated GPU-related crashes on Windows.
Crossbows & slings have a split/twisted appearance and animation. A fix is planned for 8165.

Fixes

A crash has been fixed with the toolset that would trigger when re-opening a conversation from search results.
The toolset should now run on Wine again.
Toolset script compiler no longer crashes when attempting to include a missing script.
The toolset now defaults to the NWN user directory when im/exporting erfs.
The camera bounds as configurable in the .ini now default to 1.69 values (unlocked).
Toolset crash when deleting an area with a uppercase resref was fixed.
The multiplayer server list doesn’t select a random server on open anymore.
The multiplayer server view now displays the server game type properly.
Combining parts no longer causes some geometry to sometimes disappear.
Normal mapped static lighting no longer causes lighting to be black for some static geometry.
Skin animations for parts that are attached now synch up exactly to the attached object and will no longer animate a few frames behind in certain situations.
Skybox position is now centered on the character, so skybox warping will no longer be apparent when you’re at the edge of large maps.

Features

Game and server binaries now error out if no data files can be found, instead of crashing.
The console open/close key can now be typed in the game chat bar.
Some further memleaks in the Toolset were fixed.
The toolset script editor now accepts cyrillic/non-ascii input.
The toolset script compiler identifier limit has been bumped to 16K (from 8K; error manifested was “IDENTIFIER LIST FULL” for some very complex scripts).
The toolset keeps variables on triggers and encounters when repainting their polygon.
The toolset is now much faster when opening object properties.
Steam workshop now supports tags. Simply create a tags.txt file in your project root, containing the tags you want to assign to your upload, one per line.

Toolset area editor improvements:

Selected objects now don't move on single click
The object properties dialog opens on double click
Support for undo/redo operations on object move actions added

NWScript

New functions: GetEventScript, SetEventScript to set NWScript event handlers on any supported object (including PCs).

Mar 16, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Patch 8164 Now Available

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Merro

Busy times at Beamdog! With the March 27 Steam release less than two weeks away, the team is locking down features and fixes. Build 8164 is now available on Steam and Beamdog.com.

Known Issues

We are still looking into the Intel Integrated GPU-related performance regressions, especially on Mac.
We are also looking into the Intel Integrated GPU-related crashes on Windows.
Crossbows & slings have a split/twisted appearance and animation. A fix is planned for 8165.

Fixes

A crash has been fixed with the toolset that would trigger when re-opening a conversation from search results.
The toolset should now run on Wine again.
Toolset script compiler no longer crashes when attempting to include a missing script.
The toolset now defaults to the NWN user directory when im/exporting erfs.
The camera bounds as configurable in the .ini now default to 1.69 values (unlocked).
Toolset crash when deleting an area with a uppercase resref was fixed.
The multiplayer server list doesn’t select a random server on open anymore.
The multiplayer server view now displays the server game type properly.
Combining parts no longer causes some geometry to sometimes disappear.
Normal mapped static lighting no longer causes lighting to be black for some static geometry.
Skin animations for parts that are attached now synch up exactly to the attached object and will no longer animate a few frames behind in certain situations.
Skybox position is now centered on the character, so skybox warping will no longer be apparent when you’re at the edge of large maps.

Features

Game and server binaries now error out if no data files can be found, instead of crashing.
The console open/close key can now be typed in the game chat bar.
Some further memleaks in the Toolset were fixed.
The toolset script editor now accepts cyrillic/non-ascii input.
The toolset script compiler identifier limit has been bumped to 16K (from 8K; error manifested was “IDENTIFIER LIST FULL” for some very complex scripts).
The toolset keeps variables on triggers and encounters when repainting their polygon.
The toolset is now much faster when opening object properties.
Steam workshop now supports tags. Simply create a tags.txt file in your project root, containing the tags you want to assign to your upload, one per line.

Toolset area editor improvements:

Selected objects now don't move on single click
The object properties dialog opens on double click
Support for undo/redo operations on object move actions added

NWScript

New functions: GetEventScript, SetEventScript to set NWScript event handlers on any supported object (including PCs).

Mar 12, 2018

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition out this month

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Who's that wizard?

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, the revamped re-release of BioWare’s 2002 wizard ’em up, is due to launch on March 27th. That’s the news from revampers Beamdog, whose prior retromancy includes revamping Planescape: Torment and overhauling Baldur’s Gate then making a new expansion for it. Like those, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition has fancier pictures, though NWN being 3D means the overhaul is a little more involved. (more…)